Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Frontier system submitted its very first score to the Top500 list of 1.1 exaflops, making it the world’s fastest supercomputer and the first to break the exascale barrier. Frontier’s performance is more than double the number of the next two systems and greater than the sum of the next seven systems on the latest Top500 list.

In addition, the Frontier test and development system (TDS) secured the top spot on the Green500 list, delivering 62.68 gigaflops/watt power-efficiency from a single cabinet of optimized 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct MI250x accelerators. Finally, Frontier’s mixed-precision computing performance clocked in at 6.86 exaflops, as measured by the High-Performance Linpack-Accelerator Introspection, or HPL-AI, test. The next steps for Frontier include continued testing and validation of the system, which remains on track for final acceptance and early science access later in 2022, and open for full science at the beginning of 2023.

In other AMD EPYC and AMD Instinct MI200 systems, CSC’s LUMI supercomputer is third on the Top500 list with 152 petaflops of performance and third on the Green500 list with 51.63 gigaflops/watt power-efficiency, and the Adastra system at GENCI-CINES is tenth on the Top500 list and fourth on the Green500 list. These systems continue to highlight the performance and efficiency capabilities of the Instinct accelerators at a node, cabinet, and system level.

Additionally, the Top500 and Green500 lists showcase the rapidly growing preference for AMD solutions across the HPC industry. On the Top500 list, AMD powers 94 total systems, an increase of 95% year-over-year, and Instinct MI200 accelerators made their first entry to the Top500 list with seven systems. The performance number delivered by this single generation of Instinct-based systems on the Top500 list almost equals the combined Flops of the rest of the 161 accelerated systems on Top500.

“We are excited that AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators power the world’s fastest, most energy-efficient, and a first supercomputer to break the exascale barrier,” said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Data Center Solutions Group at AMD. “Innovation and delivering more performance and efficiency for supercomputers is critical to addressing the world's most complex challenges. EPYC processors and Instinct accelerators continue to push the envelope in high-performance computing, providing the performance needed to advance scientific discoveries.”